Mandate
by porcelaindakota
Summary: In retrospect, someone should have seen it coming. The creation of Fire Lord Sozin and his hundred years' war. [chapter one: famine and fairness. sozin learns his purpose.] ON HIATUS
1. Prologue

Exactly 132 years before the arrival of Sozin's comet, there was another conflict, on a much smaller scale than the 100 Years' War. It would later be referred to as the Da-Suan War, after the small, southwesterly portion of the Earth Kingdom that became the centerpiece of the fighting.

Da Suan was a fertile farming region, bordering the ocean that separated the Earth Kingdom and the Fire Nation. In times past, many peoples of Fire Nation descent had lived in the region, and it had constantly passed between the two nations, occasionally peacefully, but more often through violence. This newest conflict, therefore, was not unusual, just a note in the long chain of disputes.

The only difference this time around was found in the battles themselves. The earthbenders fought with wooden spears and the earth itself, charging out into battle as a massive human wave; it was in this manner that the wars of older ages had been fought, with hand-to-hand combat, one warrior versus another.

But the Fire Nation had evolved. Reports had come to Ba Sing Se as early as seven years before that the Fire Nation was building frightening new technology; stories were told of strange metal monsters impervious to storm or stone, of machines that destroyed warriors before they could even strike. The Earth Kingdom had dismissed the reports. Such a battle would be unprincipled; what sort of honorable foe would murder the enemy before they were even seen? And such weapons would go against traditions and degrade the warrior spirit, the gifts given to fighters by the spirits themselves. Such warfare was unthinkable, especially from the firebenders, with their great emphasis on honor and dignity.

The Earth Kingdom was disastrously wrong; instead of swords and fists, the Fire Nation fought in metal tanks (though still primitive compared to their later technology). From clifftops they flung flaming projectiles from steel catapults; they sailed in iron-sided ships.

It was, by all accounts, a slaughter. The Fire Nation retook Da Suan in less than ten days; as they paraded through the familiar streets, the Earth Kingdom army limped home, to Omashu and Ba Sing Se and other grand walled cities built of stone.

For the next 70 years, the Earth Kingdom publicly stewed over the demise and humiliation of Da Suan. There were appeals to the other nations, cries to the Avatar for Da Suan to be returned to its homeland, never mind that the population was quite evenly split in half between those of Fire Nation and Earth Kingdom descent.

It wasn't until the early years of the reign of Fire Lord Kunan that Da Suan was returned.

The Earth Kingdom itself was not able to secure the return of the region; it was in fact a collaborative effort between the Water Tribes and the Air Nomads (and the ensuing pressure they placed on the Avatar) that finally led to the release of Da Suan.

In truth, the other nations could have cared less about the fate of Da Suan. Their initial concern was for the strange new weapons used by the Fire Nation. Like the Earth Kingdom, the Water Tribes and the Air Nomads were unindustrialized, and relied on crude, traditional weapons. The Fire Nation's sudden military upswing was intimidating and terrifying; if war were to break out on a larger scale, the result would be devastating for the other nations.

Under Fire Lord Kunan, the other nations saw their opening. Fire Lord Kunan was an easily persuaded man, a pacifist by all accounts. His tendency to shy away from any sort of conflict or tension was well known throughout the world; the other nations took advantage of this well-publicized weakness, convincing the Fire Lord that a conference between the four nations was needed in the interest of global interaction, and, once there, bullied and coerced him into signing a treaty.

The Water Tribes and Air Nomads, by way of the peace talks, sought demilitarization, a relapse in production of industrialized weapons in the Fire Nation. The Earth Kingdom took advantage of the negotiations to sue for the return of Da Suan. With any other Fire Lord, it most likely would not have worked. Concession awarded nothing to the Fire Nation, except for the empty promise of peace and friendly relations. However, rumors soon spread that Kunan was overjoyed with this arrangement, and wholeheartedly believed in the integrity of the other nations.

And so, early in his reign, Fire Lord Kunan signed away Fire Nation rights to Da Suan.

The treaty was titled the Da Suan Agreement. It guaranteed that the region of Da Suan was to permanently remain in Earth Kingdom hands. Additionally, the Agreement limited Fire Nation industrialized weapon output, dismantling the industries that produced their tanks and catapults.

On the same day, Fire Lady Henai was brought to bed of a son, the new Crown Prince of the Fire Nation.

The child was named Sozin, after the Fire Nation spirit of peace, and in honor of the Da Suan Agreement and the new, harmonious world into which he had been born.

* * *

So, I'm planning on writing a little series about Sozin: it might jump around a little bit, from childhood, to adolescence (did I spell that right?), and eventually him as an adult, at a couple various points. Hopefully it will still make sense. But there just isn't enough about Sozin out there. 

Major thanks to FlameRaven and LoveroftheFlame for beta-ing this. They're both pretty much amazing.

Reviews are love!

-sugarland


	2. First Lessons

The marketplace was crowded and hot, with the sun beating down mercilessly in the midst of a blazing Fire Nation summer. The odors of fire flakes and rotting fish assaulted Sozin's senses, and he wrinkled up his nose in disgust.

"Why can't we just send servants to get this?" he asked his mother, who pulled him through the winding streets by her grip on his wrist.

Her eyes flickered briefly to his. "We have servants with us," she said lightly, gesturing to the crowd of ladies-in-waiting surrounding them. "Besides, it's good for the people to see their royal family." She began to part the thick crowd, signaling her ladies-in-waiting to move the throngs aside so that they could pass.

Lady Henai, Sozin's mother, was spectacularly unlike Fire Lord Kunan; she was meticulous and calculating and, above all, opportunistic. It was through this sense of opportunity that she had risen past her rural-nobility origins into the highest position for a woman in the land, that of the Fire Lady.

She was long and lean, with a wild mane of coarse black hair and dark golden eyes. She adorned herself with precious jewels and fabrics; rubies were sewn into her robes with golden thread. Bangles _click_ed on her wrists. She stood at the head their small party, stalking ahead with Sozin, a lioness leading her pack; she easily caught the eyes of shopkeepers and commoners. Many of them watched her resentfully, some with outright rancor in their eyes, peering at her royal finery jealously.

Sozin stared back. Beggars crouched in doorways, wearing torn and ragged clothing. Entire families, he saw, lived in the streets, some under stairs, some in dirty, cramped tents. Others seemed to sleep on the ground, in the open.

"Mama?" he whispered, tugging at her arm.

She followed his eyes to the bedraggled masses. "Ah. Yes."

"Why do all these people live in the streets?"

Her grip on his wrist grew noticeably tighter, and Sozin squirmed uncomfortably. "There's no place left in the city for them to live."

Sozin watched the street-dwellers again; they met his eyes nervously, afraid. "Why don't they just move to the country?" He paused and smiled at his mother. "They could be farmers!"

"There's no land left in the country, either." She guided Sozin into a booth advertising fresh fruits. His face fell. "Overpopulation, my darling. More and more people are born in the Fire Nation every year, but our lands are too small to support them." His mother selected ripe kumquats and pomegranates.

"Oh."

"That'll be four copper pieces," said the elderly woman behind the fruit stand. His mother paid and wheeled their group back out into the streets.

"It isn't unexpected," she said, handing the fruit to a servant. "After all, we are just one island." Then she pocketed her remaining gold coins and continued on as if she had said nothing at all.

* * *

"It's so big." Sozin spun the globe, watching the colors blur together before his eyes. "It could eat the Fire Nation."

At six years old, Sozin had recently begun his formal schooling in preparation for his duties as Crown Prince and, eventually, as Fire Lord. His teachers were hand-selected by his father, Fire Lord Kunan (which meant they were truly chosen by his _mother) _from the ranks of the scholar elite.

"Yes." Sozin's tutor smiled. "The Earth Kingdom is the largest country on the planet. Originally consisting of over 200 individual princedoms, it was consolidated by Chin the Great—otherwise known as Chin Kuei—in the year…"

"What's the brown part, right here?" Sozin asked, pointing to a discolored region along the ocean. "Why's it a different color than the rest?"

"That," said his tutor, suddenly looking nervous, "is Da Suan. It, ah…warrants its own place on the map." Then he spun the globe, so that the small brown circle was out of view and the world rocked on its miniature axis. "Now, Chin Kuei conquered the eastern continent through a combination of…"

"But why's it a different color? Shouldn't it just be green?"

"If your father had his way," came a woman's voice, "It would be."

Sozin spun; his mother, Fire Lady Henai, stood framed in the doorway, her expression unreadable, cryptic. The smells of cinnamon and incense floated into the room behind her. To Sozin, in this moment she appeared tall and dangerous, powerful, more of a leader than his father had ever been.

"Lady Henai!" blustered his tutor, inclining his head respectfully. He seemed to have formed the same impression. "I was just explaining to Prince Sozin the formation of the Earth Kingdom."

"Of course." Then she turned back to Sozin, snatched his wrist and led it to the globe. "Tell me," she said, repositioning the map, "What is the first thing you noticed about the Earth Kingdom?"

"It's really big," he repeated. Then he recalled the conversation of the marketplace. _More and more people are born in the Fire Nation each year, but our lands are too small; after all, we are just one island. _"Really big," he said one more time, looking at his mother and watching satisfaction bloom in her eyes.

* * *

Six years after the Da Suan Agreement, the Fire Nation fell into a great famine. It was a remarkably dry season, poor for crops; additionally, the already limited growing lands of the Fire Nation appeared to be overtaxed. The strain of supporting the large, expanding population of firebenders was simply too much for their small territory.

It was during this time that Fire Lord Kunan was obligated to embark on a tour of his lands and holdings. Carriages were prepared, the court packed up, as servants, advisors, and ladies-in-waiting prepared to follow the royal family.

Sozin, in the days preceding their departure from the capital, had grown sick and feverish, though deemed well enough to travel. Traditionally, the heir to the throne traveled and was seen by the commoners with the Fire Lord; however, because of his sickness, tradition was excused and Sozin was placed in his mother's carriage.

"Darling," Lady Henai said in a soft voice, wiping his sweaty brow, "We're in the city now. You should look."

Sozin shook his head, burrowed deeper into his blankets. He was sick, he was tired, his enthusiasm for travel gone; he just wanted to sleep…

"_Darling_," she said again, and this time her voice was dangerous, a command, a threat. "Look." She pulled him free of his blankets, settled him next to the window. "You need to see this," she hissed in his ear.

And so he looked.

There were hundreds, maybe even thousands of people, crowding the streets, shouting at the carriage, crying out in a collective sorrow. The throngs pushed up against the carriage, pounding and grasping at it; Sozin watched as an emaciated woman held up her baby, its belly swollen with hunger, pushing madly through the human sea. Sozin felt the carriage rattle beneath him, and clutched onto the velvet seat cushion.

"Mama," he said, "What are they _doing?"_

Later, when he was older, he would understand the strange smile that flitted across her face, a smile that said she had been waiting for the question. "They're starving," she said. "Your father can't feed his people. And we have no land to grow crops; it's all ruined. We don't even have Da Suan," she finished, wrapping her arm around Sozin and watching with him. "Your father lost that, too."

Sozin shut his eyes and tried to remember the strange name: Da Suan. _It warrants its own place on the map, _his tutor had saidHe now understood why—because of his father. His father had lost it, somehow, lost it to the already massive Earth Kingdom. The Earth Kingdom had taken Da Suan and devoured it, just as it could easily devour the rest of the Fire Nation. All of this, his country's shy and tenuous position, Sozin suddenly understood, in a glaring clarity unsettling for his tender age.

"This is what your father has done," his mother continued in a low voice. Her hand was hot at the nape of his neck. "He has lost our farmlands; he lets the rest of the world and his dear _Avatar Roku _walk all over him. We have no place left to grow food. We have too many people for our small country."

She stroked his hair. "I want you to watch this, to remember this, my darling. Because _you_ will be the Fire Lord someday, and you will have to _fix it."_

"Yes, mama," he whispered, leaning into her shoulder, shutting his eyes. He was too tired and too young to understand the politics, the _why _of the bite in his mother's voice, but he did understand the emotions of the situation, the hunger and desperation of the people that his father was supposed to be taking care of.

Most of all, he understood the meaning of his mother's final words, the duty laced within: _you will have to fix it. _

* * *

Finally, late in the evening, they arrived at the home of one of their country vassals—a Lord Yeng, who supervised the primary herding and agricultural region of the Fire Nation, the Tai Huo province.

After arrival, Sozin was separated from his parents and sent to prepare for dinner in his new 'bedroom,' which he noted was much smaller than his chambers in the palace. He was just scrubbing his face and hands when he heard the creak of the door easing open.

"My lord," came a voice with the accent of the country, "I was told to escort you to the evening meal."

Sozin dried his hands on his traveling robes, watching the servant with interest; before him was a woman in her mid-forties, dressed in thatched red robes. She had the look of someone who had once been stout; though her eyes still carried the virility of her life before the famine, her limbs were thin and spindly; Sozin stared at them in a sort of disgusted fascination.

"My lord," she prompted, and Sozin blinked and looked away from the bony crook of her arm.

"Her Highness your mother," the woman continued, "Said you were to dress and meet her and your father in the dining hall, promptly."

"I don't know where the dining hall is," Sozin said, as began to rifle through drawers in search of a proper robe.

The woman pulled open a drawer on the other side of his room, removed a red and gold robe folded neatly inside. "I will show you," she said, handing it to him, with what Sozin thought was the ghost of a smile.

He dressed quickly, and the woman led him through sunlit hallways, until the smell of meat and the sound of rice bubbling in the pot reached them.

"Here, my lord," she said, and tugged him through a low arched doorway. Inside sat his mother and his father, along with another man, tall and thin with a large dark mustache, at a table that was much too long for just the three of them.

Kunan's face lit up as his son walked into the room. "Sozin!" he said, smiling brilliantly. "Just the man I wanted to see. Pull up a chair son, and try some of this sausage. It's fantastic." Kunan turned to Lady Henai. "I've always said, haven't I, that the best sausage comes from the country."

"Yes, always." Sozin noticed that there was no sausage on her plate. "Sozin," she said, golden eyes slightly narrowed, "This is Lord Yeng, one of our country vassals. Greet him properly."

Sozin fell into the slight bow he had been taught. "It is an honor to meet you, Lord Yeng," he said mechanically, gazing hungrily at the dinner table out of the corner of his eye.

Lord Yeng nodded briskly, then turned back to his father. The two men reengaged themselves in trivial conversation, again discussing sausage. ("_No grain for the pigs,"_ he heard Lord Yeng say).

Sozin sat next to his mother, who gestured at the platters. "What would you like, son?"

He turned to answer her, but instead caught the eye of another one of the servants, bustling about, filling the goblets full of wine (or juice, in Sozin's case). This one was a boy, only a few years older than Sozin himself; his eyes were sunken and his hand shook on the pitcher when he returned Sozin's gaze.

The woman that had escorted him to dinner suddenly appeared, grabbing the boy by the arm and steering him into the kitchen. Other servants, just as thin and emaciated as them, swooped in to finish the dinner.

A flush crept up Sozin's face. "I'm not hungry," he said, avoiding his mother's eyes. "Can I go back to my room? I was looking at my books." He rose quickly, very nearly upsetting his cup, and without waiting for the proper pardon, fled the room.

"What a boy!" exclaimed his father, reaching for his wine. "Always wanting to learn, that one. Absolutely loves his lessons. Some Fire Lord he'll make, eh?"

Lady Henai smiled sympathetically: "He strives only to continue your legacy, my Lord."

* * *

That night, when he'd been tucked in and the manor was quite silent, Sozin lit the candles in his new bedroom and pulled out his schoolbooks, searching for a map of the world.

When he found it, he traced all of the countries in turn; the Water Tribes of the North and South, ice floes at the ends of the earth; the Air Nomads, tiny parcels of land settled in amongst the other nations; and the Fire Nation, a slender half-moon island, quite alone, and, compared to the rest of the world, quite small.

Finally he traced the Earth Kingdom, his finger lingering over the massive borders, with a feeling in the pit of his stomach that told him something just wasn't quite right. In his child's mind, things were black and white, right and wrong; and in this same child's sense, he certainly found this unfair, the way the earthbenders had all this land, and his people did not. His own people starved and slept in the streets while just an ocean away, there was all this land…land, he thought, circling the brown region of Da Suan, that had once belonged to them.

He fell asleep soon after, his ears ringing.

* * *

Finally got chapter one up. So, major thanks again to my betas, loveroftheflame and flameraven. Also, thanks to last chapter's reviewers: Hotspur, lunaverserocks, and antyca. Thanks so much, you guys! Hope to hear from you again this time around.

And Lady Henai is where the badness comes from! She's...what? Azula's great-great-grandmother?

-sugarland


End file.
